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Ask HN: What it takes to call yourself a senior engineer?

2 points by wst_ ↗ HN
What it takes to call yourself a senior engineer? Does age matter? Can you call yourself a senior after few years if you are really smart and willing to learn even more? What if you see gap between your colleagues and you, even if they are older - do you have to wait anyway? Or maybe age doesn't matter. If so isn't it strange to say about yourself a senior, just few years after graduation? What if you switched career path - you are expert in one tech area and then switched to software engineering and you are pretty good at it but can't count 10+ years in there? Or at least you feel you are pretty good... But can you judge by yourself, really? And most importantly when should you respond to senior engineering job posts? It is all too vague.

2 comments

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erdaniels
Age doesn't matter. The title exists if someone else thinks your senior in the context of your current work. Senior at company A may be Software Engineer II at another due to organizational differences or lack of experience in the topics worked on.

From my limited experience, a senior engineer in my eyes is someone at work who is a subject matter expert in the systems they are currently working on within their team or department. In addition to that, the litmus test I use to classify a senior engineer is, "would I go to this person for advice for most issues or questions I have within this team?" For me it's both technical expertise and sophisticated communication skills to be able to effectively communicate to other team members and mentor them.

Beyond this role, I see ownership and autonomy within larger parts of system as being the next step.

paktek123
The senior title comes with many responsibilities that exceed the previous stages. For example I'd expect a senior to be able to take a well rounded approach to problem solving. They need to be able to use their years of experience to bring in technical value to the company. I guess the rest depends on the actual job spec. Normally you'd find the list of responsibilities to be longer.